So, what are you listening to these days?

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One thing that I think that I will never tire of is the music of Leonard Cohen. Yes, some of his songs are getting overdone ("Hallelujah", I'm lookin' at you), but with a career spanning about 50 years, there's always plenty more that haven't got that over-exposure.

Which is all a prelude to saying that I am currently listening to Patricia O'Callahan's album The Matador - Songs of Leonard Cohen. O'Callahan is an unabashed Cohen fangirl and has included at least a couple of his songs on just about every album she has done. I am fairly sure (though I haven't confirmed) that The Matador is at least her second album to be entirely made up of Cohen's songs. And there's plenty to love on this one. The versions (as far as I have listened) are wonderful, with good arrangements that perfectly complement O'Callahan's classically trained voice. She hits some of his 21st century, post-comeback songs, which don't really get as much love as his 60s through 90s material. Her version of "Alexandra Leaving" from Ten New Songs is a thing of true beauty. But there's also plenty of "classic" Cohen on show, from less frequently covered material like "The Gypsy Wife" to a rollicking, lively, bilingual (Spanish and English) "Dance Me to the End of Love".

I'll search YouTube later to see if there are any videos for the album.
 
Mendalla said:
One thing that I think that I will never tire of is the music of Leonard Cohen. Yes, some of his songs are getting overdone ("Hallelujah", I'm lookin' at you), but with a career spanning about 50 years, there's always plenty more that haven't got that over-exposure.

Which is all a prelude to saying that I am currently listening to Patricia O'Callahan's album The Matador - Songs of Leonard Cohen. O'Callahan is an unabashed Cohen fangirl and has included at least a couple of his songs on just about every album she has done. I am fairly sure (though I haven't confirmed) that The Matador is at least her second album to be entirely made up of Cohen's songs. And there's plenty to love on this one. The versions (as far as I have listened) are wonderful, with good arrangements that perfectly complement O'Callahan's classically trained voice. She hits some of his 21st century, post-comeback songs, which don't really get as much love as his 60s through 90s material. Her version of "Alexandra Leaving" from Ten New Songs is a thing of true beauty. But there's also plenty of "classic" Cohen on show, from less frequently covered material like "The Gypsy Wife" to a rollicking, lively, bilingual (Spanish and English) "Dance Me to the End of Love".

I'll search YouTube later to see if there are any videos for the album.
Click to expand...

We are often told there is no end of love ... until coming down to earth out of forms of essence! Vapours ... it is said the female of the species sometimes suffer them ... fair monis?
 
Some O'Callahan Cohen.

A live version of Alexandra Leaving, with a wonderful intro.


Ignore the weird video and just enjoy one of my favorite covers of Dance Me to the End of Love.

 
Alexandria sunk, fell for it as Egyption myth ... right from the land of imagination ... really dark they say ... but you can't say that about unseen hues ... oh Douway? Under the influence of the fall of Eve as that's all there was in the beginning ... until the lucid star appeared ... lust Erie? The ancient psyche on the search ... Sea King asweat-NG (night condition of Pisces)?

Runs par all el the Stag at Eve ... Dear Me! --- Ustinov ... and the egg was laid as OV knead! Give it a rub ... you crane 'n ...
 
Just discovered the existence of Delectus by Greek composer and synth-wizard Vangelis. It collects 95 tracks from albums that he recorded for Polydor and Vertigo between 1973 and 1985. It is not a complete collection of his work from that period (the albums Heaven & Hell and Albedo 0.39 are not represented, for instance, presumably due to being on other labels), but it still covers a good span of his work from his early prog rock with Aphrodite's Child to his popular eighties film scores like Chariots of Fire. It also includes most of the Jon & Vangelis recordings, featuring Jon Anderson of Yes on vocals.

L'enfant, from 1979's Opera Sauvage, is a favorite of mine that frequently pops up on soundtracks and such. Opera Sauvage was the soundtrack to a French documentary and is his second most successful album in the States.

 
This video was made for the 2018 release of this previously unreleased Prince song...one of the recordings from his vault. Apparently (I read), he stored away enough unreleased material for about 100 albums.

It's worth reading the YouTube description of this song.

He was gifted. He was a gift.

 
So, on my recent flight to Miami, the inflight entertainment system had, among other options, a collection of Austin City Limits concerts. One of them was St. Vincent (Annie Clark), an Oklahoma-born Texan who was on her second ACL appearance. And it was a marvellous concert, basically a live play-through of her album Masseduction, which is now up for some Grammys. The band, interestingly, was arranged in a line across the stage with St. Vincent at stage right, rather than being behind her as backing bands often are. That gave a bit of equality to the other musicians. Her backing vocalist and keyboard player is very talented herself, apparently a successful musician in her own right when not playing with St. Vincent. Weirdly, the two male band members, the drummer and second keyboard player, wore rather featureless masks. Haven't researched the meaning of that, yet, but I'm sure there is one. St. Vincent is very much an artist, not just another pop star.

After getting home, I discovered that St. Vincent had done a rather different live set on the NPR series Live From Here with excerpts posted on the show's Youtube channel. This time, she was alone with just a piano player backing her. It was the same songs, but with the acoustic arrangements from her recent release "Masseducation", which I mentioned in another thread and listened to on the plane when I went to Phoenix in October. Very different, but also a marvellous performance.

And, to top it off, I borrowed Masseduction for a new listen. It really is a great album and I hope she wins at least one of her Grammys, though I'm not holding my breath. She may be a little "alternative" for them, both artistically and personally.
 
Hmm. Never posted any of the St. Vincent stuff. Will deal with that later.

Using up my Hoopla borrows for January and I found a Michael Buble retrospective collection called, not surprisingly, The Michael Buble Collection. I haven't really listened to Canada's favorite crooner much, but he's got one of the best voices in that genre since Sinatra's heyday and his jazz takes on contemporary pop classics add some currency to the American standards that are the bread and butter for such singers.
 
I was listening to CBC as I cooked dinner, and unsure who was the host, but, dang, i found him annoying. He mispronounced names, poorly interviewed a person, and just was annoying. He did mention everyone's name, but, I didn't hear anyone mentioning his.
 
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